descriptionTổng quan
The Coelophysis dinosaur was a bird-like prehistoric inhabitant of New Mexico. Until recently, it was thought that this species was cannibalistic, meaning that it preyed on its own offspring. But now a new analysis of the existing fossil* evidence indicates that, in this belief, scientists may have been mistaken.
Bones preserved inside the fossilised stomach of an adult Coelophysis, long believed to be the remnants of a baby Coelophysis and the primary evidence for cannibalism in that species, have now been proved to be the bones of a type of crocodile. This discovery is a reminder of the difficulty of inferring animal behaviours from bits of fossilised bones. But as museums prepare to alter their displays, and publishers to revise their textbooks to take account of this new knowledge, it is also a reminder that science means never having to say you' re sorry. 'In science, all ideas must be open for testing,' said Sterling Nesbitt, the PhD student at Columbia University who led the research that debunked the decades-old presumption about Coelophysis.
The story begins in 1947, when scientists from New York' s American Museum of Natural History excavated a remarkable bed of prehistoric bones containing more than 1,000 skeletons of Coelophysis, one of the earliest dinosaurs to walk the Earth. The largely whole skeletons, which were up to nine feet long from tail tip to nose, were in many cases stacked on top of one another. Scientists suspect that a huge herd was wiped out in a flash flood and soon afterwards buried in mud and sand.
categoryCác dạng câu hỏi
True/False/Not Given6 câu
Fill in the Blank7 câu
